April 11, 2008

Cookbook Friday Returns: The Appalachians

If you’ve been with me for a while, then you know I have a thing for family history (my own, mostly) and old recipes. A fascination with how food and family life have intersected over the generations. So, I posted recipes and stories from the Italian side of my family last year. Now, I’m doing the same thing with the Appalachian side.

Growing up in the North all my life, it came as a surprise that many of my ancestors were from the South. Sure, my maternal grandmother made fried chicken, but didn’t everybody’s? I vaguely knew she grew up in Virginia even though she had lived in Connecticut for as long as I could remember. Still, Virginia’s just barely over the Mason-Dixon line. Does that even count as Southern?

Also, I had thought these Southern relatives were of British descent, and some turned out to be, but most of them were Pennsylvania Dutch, which, come to find out, is German. Did you know this? In German, the word for German is Deutsch, so it only took a couple of New World misspellings to get to Dutch. And it turns out that the Pennsylvania Dutch weren’t married to Pennsylvania, either. Some migrated south to the Virginia mountains. It can give a girl a bit of an identity crisis.

I’ll be honest, my first thought about the German thing was: Does this mean I’m a Nazi? But, then I came to my senses. Of course, it doesn’t. What makes me a Nazi is my staunch unwillingness to diverge from my set plans (though my plans tend to be of a more benevolent nature). And it does go a long way toward explaining my unnatural love for sauerkraut.

You find out lots of interesting things when you dive down the rabbit hole of genealogy. Things you’d like to know, and things you might have been better off not knowing. Like incest (not uncommon, by the way, in small, remote communities where everyone’s kind of swimming in the same gene pool). And slave-ownership. So, of course, with regards to the latter, I couldn’t help thinking: Does this make me a racist? After further reflection, I realized, no. What makes me a racist is my sudden dearth of black friends. Oh, and things like this. So, yeah.

Unlike the Italian side of my family, in which I was a participant in the family culture, I was less involved with the Southern side. They were quieter folks. We visited less often because they were further away. So I’m more of an outsider looking in. Luckily, my mom transcribed many of my great-grandmother’s stories before she died, and there’s a lot of interesting stuff in there. I also have a great-aunt who still lives in Virginia, but I don’t know how often we’ll be hearing from her. She is a good and God-fearing woman, and I’m not sure she has the stomach for my blog.

gasp! virginia is definitely southern! granted, the northern chunk near dc could break off and drift into the atlantic and i wouldn't mind, but never, ever doubt that virginia is southern. i'm from the southwest portion myself, and i could tell you a think or two about appalachian living. you'd have to set aside a good bit of time, though, because i talk real slow. :)

My family is from Kentucky but, except for my grandmother's biscuits, you wouldn't want any of their recipes-not unless you like things like fried bologna and those jello salad recipes just brimming with calories and fat.

My folks (both sides) started out from Lancaster Co., PA, then to TN, OK, MS, IA, NE & MT. They were a traveling bunch. Houseknechts on my mother's side and Slokums on my Dad's. That hillbilly enough for ya? My father's folks raised and distilled sorghum on the farm in southern Iowa. Jeez - I have lots of tales!

It was very common in the early days for families to start off in one area of the U.S. and travel together south, then west. These families often intermarried. And many times the children were named for the mother's mother and the father's father. So, it may *seem* like you're reading about incest, but you're not necessarily. There may have actually been three Catherines living under the same roof. Census records were very sketchy, at best. Geneology is fun!

I do hope we will have some photos to go with this side of the cookbook!!

Southeastern West Virginia (yes, that's a place) right over the border from your Southwest Virginians.

You should come down here and do some field research, you know. Unfortunately, you just missed the annual Ham, Bacon, and Egg show at the state fairgrounds. (The high school 4H kids raise the chickens and pigs and cure the ham and bacon.)

Oh, and, yes, there are plenty of PA Germans around here. It has to do with geology -- they came down the long valleys that stretch all the way from PA to southern VA (aka the Ridge and Valley Province of the Appalachians). There are still active Mennonite communities around here too.

The Herbwife: So glad you're still with me! I would looooove to make a trip down there sometime, though I'm sure Price's Fork bears no resemblance to what it used to be 100 years ago.

Heather: Phew. Yeah, my relatives came before the Civil War, as it turns out. That was a relief.

Barry Foy: Appalachia goes up that far? Wait, let me get a map...

Sally: I'll definitely be posting some cool photos! As for the incest, well, it's not that brothers were marrying sisters, but when everyone in a certain-mile radius is a cousin to some degree, you start to see a lot of the same names come up in your family tree. It gets a little weird. But that was even the case with my Acadian relatives (Nova Scotia) in their small fishing settlements. You can trace a line back to the same couple four or five times. Anyhoo...

Linda: We'll have to compare biscuit recipes. As for the jello salads, well, we have our share of those, too!

Grace: It's good you talk slow because normally I only pick up every third word. You'll be coming in loud and clear.

CC: Different kind of redneck, though, right? Isn't that Florida?

NurseJen: That sounds, um, delicious. Nope, don't have that one. Actually, only a few of the recipes I have seem ethnically PA Dutch. Most of them are just old-fashioned Southern dishes.